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Most internet traffic comes from bots

More than half of internet traffic is bots, but an increasing number of internet bots are being developed to game social platforms.

Expand chart
Data: Imperva Incapsula Bot Traffic Report. Based on 16.7+ billion visits to 100,000 randomly-selected domains on the Incapsula network; Chart: Lazaro Gamio/Axios

The big picture: Not all bots are bad. (Some, for example, are used to make our search experiences more accurate.) But the bots used to spread fake news are usually bad, and bad bots make up roughly one quarter of internet traffic. Bots are programmed to perform simple internet tasks repeatedly. On social media, such tasks include liking or retweeting certain content to falsely inflate its authority on the internet.

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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

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Uganda's election: Museveni declared winner, Wine claims fraud

Wine rejected the official results of the election. Photo: Sumy Sadruni/AFP via Getty

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Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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